1.1 From Digital Humanities to Speculative Computing - UCLA ...

in hegemonic practices, critiques of imperialism and cultural authority, power relations
and disciplinary measures, as is scholarly research in a conventional key. In that regard,
SpecLab is part of a larger critical phenomenon, even if its approaches are deliberately
pitted against certain aspects of the base on which it builds. lii But our focus is not on the
artifacts themselves, but on the design of the environments and the way ideological
assumptions built into their structure and infrastructure perpetuate unexamined concepts.
Speculative computing distinguishes itself from digital humanities on the basis of
its sources of inspiration and intellectual traditions. If digital humanities is grounded in an
epistemological self-consciousness through its encounter with dis-ambiguation,
speculative computing is driven by a commitment to interpretation-as-deformance in a
tradition that has its roots in parody, play, and critical methods such as those of the
Situationists, OuLiPians, and the longer tradition of ‘pataphysics with its emphasis on
“the particular” instead of “the general”. liii Speculative computing torques the logical
assumptions governing digital technology. It pushes back in the dialogue between the
humanities modes of interpretation and code-based formalism. Obviously, any activity
functioning in a digital environment continues to conform to the formal logic of
computational instruments. But the questions asked are fundamentally different within
the theoretical construct of speculative computing. This schematic overview charts the
points of comparison:
DIGITAL HUMANITIES SPECULATIVE COMPUTING
1. Information technology/ Formal logic 1. `Pataphysics/ The science of exceptions
2. Quantitative methods 2. Quantum interventions
(Problem-solving approaches) (Imagining what you do not know)
(practical solutions) (imaginary/imaginative solutions)
3. Self-identical objects/entities 3. Autopoeisis / constitutive or configured identity
(Subject/object dichotomy) (Co-dependent emergence)
4. Induction/deduction 4. Abduction
1.1 History / 3/2008 /
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